Hollywood TV
The Studio System in the Fifties
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Book Presentation:
The 1950s was one of the most turbulent periods in the history of motion pictures and television. During the decade, as Hollywood's most powerful studios and independent producers shifted into TV production, TV replaced film as America's principal postwar culture industry.
This pioneering study offers the first thorough exploration of the movie industry's shaping role in the development of television and its narrative forms. Drawing on the archives of Warner Bros. and David O. Selznick Productions and on interviews with participants in both industries, Christopher Anderson demonstrates how the episodic telefilm series, a clear descendant of the feature film, became and has remained the dominant narrative form in prime-time TV.
This research suggests that the postwar motion picture industry was less an empire on the verge of ruin—as common wisdom has it—than one struggling under unsettling conditions to redefine its frontiers. Beyond the obvious contribution to film and television studies, these findings add an important chapter to the study of American popular culture of the postwar period.
About the Author:
Christopher Anderson is Associate Professor of Communication & Culture at Indiana University–Bloomington.
Press Reviews:
Most definitely a book worth reading and an important contribution to media history. . . . Anderson blazes trails for continued investigation into the many historical questions surrounding the integration of film and television, questions highly relevant to the American mediascape of the 1990s.
— Historical Journal of Film, Radio, and Television
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